We had our conference call with Golden Med at 9 am this morning. Each group had the opportunity to ask Albert a few questions regarding individual segments and business in general. They do expect to release their Plasma Exchange machine next fall. The stem cell industry has been receiving quite a bit of negative press recently, and Albert thought the negative press was actually a good thing for Golden Med because it was bringing attention to the industry. Golden Med bought back a lot of stock a couple of times in the past month, and Albert said that was because they felt it was undervalued. He also mentioned that they expected very little cannibalization on the ABRS numbers with the introduction of the plasma exchange machine this year.
Kent called in to discuss how the call went, each group reported to him on how Albert answered their questions. Kent didn't have much to say, but thanked us for all our hard work and wished us a great summer.
Joe went over Brooke with us briefly. They have a large amount of loans coming due this summer, and Joe confirmed today that they had gotten those extended until the end of the year, which is good news for them. Joe had complete a liquidation model for BXXX, and based on that model they're worth about $450 million. It's very hard to value Brooke Capital though, so not an exact number.
Class was cut short early, so that everyone had plenty of time to make it to the Lied Center to listen to Chief Justice John J. Roberts Jr. speak. He provided and interesting lecture on the Louisiana Purchase and then fielded questions from a panel of students from both the Business School and Law School.
Monday, May 5, 2008
April 23, 2008
Today we were lucky enough to have the CEO of Tradebot, Dave Cummings, attend our class to tell us a little more about the company he started and how it operates. Tradebot trades on the principal of ultra short-term trading. Their average hold time for a stock is about 11 seconds. Dave created an algorithm that determines when to buy and sell a stock, based on certain parameters. They're currently trading over 100 symbols and have had great success since the beginning.
Dave also created a new market, Bats Trading. What started out as a little market he started on the side to compete with Nasdaq, now boasts 10% of the market share. Because of Bats Trading success, Dave has now shifted back over to Tradebot as CEO, and has left Bats Trading in the hands of one of his partners.
Since we had a speaker recently discuss risk management with our class, we asked Dave what methods Tradebot employs to manage risk. He said there is an overall limit on the firm as to how many orders can be placed, and traders also have individual limits on how much they can trade in a single day. A more experience trader will obviously have more freedom, then someone just starting out.
Our case for the week was IBKR, and Dave spent a little time with us going over our cases and discussing IBKR. He felt there were two factors to be aware of in the case of IBKR. One being the fact the market-making business is only getting tougher and there's more competition. The second factore is their customer market, which should do well in the future. We dicussed IBKR's performance in relation to Ameritrade and Scotttrade.
Professor Shenoy discussed IBKRs balance sheet with us. They list a 12% minority interest, which made some of our calculations a little tricky to sort out. Every year the minority interest has the option to convert their 360 million shares, so this made forecasting earnings tricky. One option is to assume that 12% is renewed each year.
Next week the entire class will be attending the Vickers lecture to hear Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. speak. We will have a conference call with Golden Meditech on Wednesday morning, and Kent should be calling in during class to go over our notes from the call.
Dave also created a new market, Bats Trading. What started out as a little market he started on the side to compete with Nasdaq, now boasts 10% of the market share. Because of Bats Trading success, Dave has now shifted back over to Tradebot as CEO, and has left Bats Trading in the hands of one of his partners.
Since we had a speaker recently discuss risk management with our class, we asked Dave what methods Tradebot employs to manage risk. He said there is an overall limit on the firm as to how many orders can be placed, and traders also have individual limits on how much they can trade in a single day. A more experience trader will obviously have more freedom, then someone just starting out.
Our case for the week was IBKR, and Dave spent a little time with us going over our cases and discussing IBKR. He felt there were two factors to be aware of in the case of IBKR. One being the fact the market-making business is only getting tougher and there's more competition. The second factore is their customer market, which should do well in the future. We dicussed IBKR's performance in relation to Ameritrade and Scotttrade.
Professor Shenoy discussed IBKRs balance sheet with us. They list a 12% minority interest, which made some of our calculations a little tricky to sort out. Every year the minority interest has the option to convert their 360 million shares, so this made forecasting earnings tricky. One option is to assume that 12% is renewed each year.
Next week the entire class will be attending the Vickers lecture to hear Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. speak. We will have a conference call with Golden Meditech on Wednesday morning, and Kent should be calling in during class to go over our notes from the call.
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